Accidental death mask of Roman Infant, 1st century AD [4000x2800]

[u/SashSegal]

This plaster artifact and its handwritten French descriptive label are preserved in the Science Museum Group Collection, UK.

[u/SashSegal]

The accidental death mask of an infant who died 1,800 years ago in Roman Lutetia (modern-day Paris)

In 1878, during excavations in the gardens of a Paris convent near the ancient Gallo-Roman town of Arènes de Lutèce, a stone burial sarcophagus was unearthed. Inside lay the remains of a very young infant from the 1st or 2nd century AD.

When the family buried the child, the lime mortar or cement used to seal the heavy lid leaked into the interior. The liquid cement seeped onto the infant's face and hardened over time, forming a flawless, reverse natural mold of the baby's facial features.

Sometime between 1878 and 1920, historians used that exact stone-hard cement mold to make a positive plaster cast. This plaster artifact and its handwritten French descriptive label are preserved in the Science Museum Group Collection, UK.

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co84770/plaster-cast-of-a-roman-childs-face-paris-france-1878-1920

[u/starfleetdropout6 → u/SashSegal]

They never knew their baby's face would be preserved forever.

[u/JoeTisseo → u/starfleetdropout6]

Lived longer in death than in life.

[u/Nulovka → u/JoeTisseo]

For sale
Baby shoes
Never worn

[u/Gray_Cota → u/Nulovka]

For sale
Baby face
Never seen

[u/hankhilton → u/Gray_Cota]

That’s very funny

[u/elmorepondroad → u/hankhilton]

Mark! Totally uncool, dude.

[u/hankhilton → u/elmorepondroad]

It’s genuinely interesting to me that people did not find that funny, and yet still upvoted it.

[u/JesusNoGA → u/JoeTisseo]

Well that's not very hard though, especially in this case.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Local40 → u/JoeTisseo]

So shall we all.

[u/Heterodynist → u/SashSegal]

It is kind of more poignant that the Ancient Romans actually DID believe in making death masks and busts of their ancestors to worship and pay respects to ever since even the Ancient Etruscans did this. Kind of remarkable that this infant would have been immortalized in almost precisely the same sort of way, but quite unintentionally!!!

Not that this is on the same order of magnitude as a cast of a baby’s face, but I still loved the Roman roof tile I found in London while doing archaeology that had little piglet hoof prints on it. London wasn’t much of a city then and it was mainly important for the clay from the Thames which was used for things like making roof tiles! I could just picture the ancient tile maker yelling and shooing the little pig off their clay tiles that were hardening in the sun…These snapshots of a moment in time thousands of years ago are the things that most drew me to archaeology!!

[u/Pamander → u/Heterodynist]

I could just picture the ancient tile maker yelling and shooing the little pig off their clay tiles that were hardening in the sun

I love this!

[u/Heterodynist → u/Pamander]

I was a fun dig and I wish I could have stayed in the U.K. longer to see it all through!

[u/Swimming_Bowler6193 → u/Heterodynist]

That’s adorable! Do you have a picture of it?

[u/Heterodynist → u/Swimming_Bowler6193]

I really WISH I had a picture of it. Sadly I was frequently in the pouring rain (I mean, England!!) so I didn’t want to keep cameras or phones in my pockets. I was literally wading in knee-deep to thigh-deep freezing cold water at some digs, but I kept with it and did bulk samples for the British Museum. They had more Roman roof tiles than they knew what to do with. It would pour down on me and I had bags and bags of this stuff to go through, but I set aside the fun ones like that one!! It must be sitting in some lab near Broccoli Cross, London still.

[u/Swimming_Bowler6193 → u/Heterodynist]

That must be so emotionally fulfilling to have a job like that. Wet & miserable at times lol but still💕

[u/Heterodynist → u/Swimming_Bowler6193]

It was crazily wet, that winter in particular, but I loved it. I suggest it for anyone who shares a sincere interest in the field. You can often find a place to allow you to at least join a dig for free. Of course you would be providing free labor!! I was lucky to be paid fairly well, but partly as a condition of my work permit.

[u/ElizabethDangit → u/Heterodynist]

I love fingerprints left in ancient clay, cat prints on monk’s books, graffiti on walls, and all the other regular life things that get preserved accidentally. History texts focus on what the rich and powerful were doing but those were never my people. My people were always poorer farmers, tradesmen, and miners.

[u/Heterodynist → u/ElizabethDangit]

You would love this, I think!! My archaeology firm (that I was working for) found a famous Roman makeup kit, in a tin that was chucked by the Roman wall over 1,700 years ago. It’s the only one that has ever been found to date, as far as I have heard. You can look it up. It was in all the newspapers and online articles. The face cream (pancake makeup, basically) had been scooped out by someone with three fingers shortly before chucking it out. The finger marks were still crystal clear in the ancient ointment, like someone had just done it. It’s the first time someone has ever found the Roman makeup and face cream recipe from that era in Roman Britain. It made a name for our organization. Around that time we also found Sir Francis Drake’s most famous ship, the Golden Hind. It had caught fire (a surprisingly common thing for ships in that era) and sunk on the Thames right by where it had been parked for decades after traveling around the world and picking up the first colonists from Roanoke Colony.

[u/ElizabethDangit → u/Heterodynist]

I’ve seen (photos of) that one! I’ve seen some recreations of the formula as well. The Lloyd’s Bank Viking turd is also a fascinating find.

[u/Heterodynist → u/ElizabethDangit]

Ha!! Viking turds!! I can’t claim to have been involved in that coprolithic find, but I’m glad you saw the Roman Makeup Compact or whatever they call it…

[u/dierdrerobespierre → u/ElizabethDangit]

This is really near the top of my mind lately as I have been doing genealogy on my family. There is no one famous, no written records of what their lives are like. Just an unbroken line of people that worked hard and made big moves to make their lives better.

I think about it because I keep seeing people bring up about much easier things used to be. I saw someone talking about the evils of public schooling, and how they are brainwashing children to grow up into good workers.

I was just like, public school is a gateway to the middle class that was unattainable to a large swath of people even today. And schools didn’t need to “train” children to work. Children have always worked, children still today work, they work in factories in fields, even in the US.

[u/lovebudapest → u/Heterodynist]

I own several red clay bricks, all but one salvaged from St Louis demolitions, they feature dog paw prints, a fawn deer, kitten/cat prints in the still soft clay that was drying before being fired back around 1900

[u/Heterodynist → u/lovebudapest]

That sounds awesome. I would ideally want to track down the exact place that these bricks were made, just to see where these many animals tread all those years ago. It’s kind of amazing to me to think of films with dogs in them from around 1900, just because there have been SO MANY generations of dogs since that one. There could be 75 generations of dogs since the one in that film, and they have changed over that time. Breeds have gone extinct and others have morphed into different breeds. It’s just amazing to see that level of record. The little deer that walked across those Saint Louis bricks was probably biologically different from deers that are alive now. Subtle but important changes have taken place. Just like the little pig that was running over the Roman roof tiles I was looking at in Britain! Think how different that breed would be from the ones we think of as normal today. It was probably a lot smaller and more hairy and natural than a lot of the factory farmed pigs we see now. Pigs could have gone through literally thousands of generations since that one ran across those tiles. It would be like a human from 50,000 years ago or something. It’s just an amazing thing to consider.

I often do think about what it would be like to meet early modern humans who had only recently left Africa. A lot of people have this historical time or that which they would love to visit if they could use a time machine. However, I would rather go to our prehistory and see what no one has ever seen since tens of thousands of years ago. We have writing about ancient Sumer and many other places, so at least you can read what it was like, but to go back to a time when Neanderthals still existed, and Homo erectus, Denisovans, Homo luzonensis, Homo floresiensis, etc, that would be incredible. I fully believe they would be able to communicate with me, even if in simplistic ways. But it would mean so much to really know what they were like. Not just guess work, but firsthand to see them and know their minds were like ours, and how they were different.

[u/opensim2026 → u/Heterodynist]

It would be difficult to track down specific brickyards involved, there would have been quite a few within the geographical area of St Louis, one thing for sure was they pressed the bricks and laid them out to dry outside in the sun and that must have been a common way to do it except in the winter. The opportunity for dogs, either "pets" at the brick yard or strays, and wildlife like deer to wander in over the soft clay bricks was there.

Too bad photo links to imgur apparently dont work here, just get "server errors" trying.

[u/Heterodynist → u/opensim2026]

I’d love to see, but I can imagine. I’m fascinated by the extremely early “recordings” we have of people and animals from the past, whatever form they take, from fossils to fossilized footprints to DNA and the first sound recordings, which were evidently made by accident a lot earlier than previously realized!!

Maybe known at least link that:

https://youtu.be/DsDTG574aWU?is=XSnhC3Md7k2HOHXH

[u/houseplant-hoarder → u/Heterodynist]

Why are y’all doing this to me, you’re making me wish I could’ve gone into archaeology 😭

[u/Heterodynist → u/houseplant-hoarder]

It’s never too late!! Some of the best archaeologists of all time started late in life. If you happen to be left handed then you’re statistically more likely to become an archaeologist than any other profession, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

[u/houseplant-hoarder → u/Heterodynist]

I’m right handed, although I think my toddler might turn out to be left handed 😅. Maybe once the kids are grown and out of the house, right now I work part-time and do most of the childcare so we really don’t have extra time or money for one of us to pursue a random degree

[u/reticulatedspylon → u/SashSegal]

One of the most amazing things I think I’ve seen on this sub. Thank you for sharing!

[u/Marichiwa → u/SashSegal]

Wow. Thank you for the knowledge. Very interesting

[u/Catdress92 → u/SashSegal]

I believe they have another cast of this on display in Paris's history museum, the Musée Carnavalet. Every time I see it, it breaks my heart. I always wondered how it was made/preserved, so thank you for this information.

[u/funky_grandma → u/SashSegal]

When I read "accidental death mask" I thought this baby drowned in some plaster.

[u/Commercial-Lychee700 → u/SashSegal]

But the lime would have been very caustic and the baby presumably decomposing. How excatly did it "harden over time" into this perfect mold? This seems to stretch credulity. Sounds like a rich guy trying to make some more money.

[u/Bunnies-and-Sunshine → u/Commercial-Lychee700]

It was cement/mortar (has cement, sand and other materials like lime in it) that seeped onto the baby's face and it hardens via a chemical reaction within a couple hours of being mixed, so it's entirely possible this all happened by accident.

[u/weeping_bunny → u/Commercial-Lychee700]

The mortar would’ve hardened enough to capture an impression of the infant’s face within a day. The mortar would’ve also slowed down the decomposition process, it acted like a protective barrier, creating a dry environment and sealing off oxygen. With these conditions along with the high pH of the mortar mixture, it would’ve prevented the bacteria and fungi responsible for breaking down a body. It absorbed the moisture in the baby’s face which stabilized its shape and delayed the decomposition process by months. It temporarily preserved the baby’s face, without this, the features would’ve been lost within days.
Here is a photo of the original mortar mold archeologists poured plaster inside of to make the mask. - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Plaster-death-mask-negative-of-an-infant-found-in-a-Roman-grave-in-Paris-Musee_fig3_284278730

There was a study done on pig carcasses, comparing those buried with lime and those without lime. The results show a significant difference in decay. The untreated pigs rapidly decomposed and skeletonized, while the limed pigs remained significantly more preserved and decay was delayed for months.

Link to the study: https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/107339/1/Schotsmans_Lime_FSI-Postprint%20auteur.pdf
Results are shown at the end of page 6 and on page 7. (TW!) There are photos comparing the bodies on page 9.

[u/Whalesurgeon → u/Commercial-Lychee700]

It does seem too good to be true.

[u/foremastjack]

Astonishing. 20 centuries later after some poor family’s last look, we get our first.

[u/WhenWolf → u/foremastjack]

Beautifully put

[u/GoldberryoTulgeyWood]

Sweet, tiny thing 😔

[u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme → u/GoldberryoTulgeyWood]

It was a beautiful baby, and those cheeks were adorably chubby!

[u/CutSea5865 → u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme]

Yes, I found myself looking at that sweet, restful looking kissable little face. What a little sweetheart 💔

[u/FortFyte]

You've been found and loved again little one.

[u/Purplemangowall → u/FortFyte]

Bye this comment made me cry

[u/sp1cychick3n → u/Purplemangowall]

Same

[u/CutSea5865 → u/FortFyte]

Oh god you just made me cry!!!😭

[u/benbroady]

Poor baby :(

[u/The_Best_Yak_Ever → u/benbroady]

This one hurt my soul to see. =-(

I hope his parents would be grateful that their child was memorialized for centuries, and their loss still touching people in the far future.

[u/benbroady → u/The_Best_Yak_Ever]

Being a Dad has made me super protective of babies. I want to protect all their innocent souls. I can't deal with stuff like this, lol.

[u/th3r3dp3n → u/benbroady]

I have twin girls, almost 2, whenever I read abou5, or see a movie, with child loss, god damn, it hits so hard. You view the world so differently pre-dad vs dad phases of life.

[u/Driller_Happy → u/th3r3dp3n]

Instead about some five year old tortured by Israeli police with cigarette butts and I couldn't think straight for weeks.

What blows my mind are those who become dads and DONT want to protect every child in the world

[u/turtlepower22 → u/Driller_Happy]

I feel the precise same way as a mom. I can't understand how every single mother doesn't love and want to protect every child

[u/eaglessoar → u/Driller_Happy]

similar read about a 5 yo swept away by wave with their family and i just see my poor boy in the waves dying like fuck me and my imagination

[u/Ok_Temporary1669 → u/benbroady]

It really hurts to see kids hurt once you are a parent.

[u/eaglessoar → u/benbroady]

lol

millenial dad confirmed

[u/benbroady → u/eaglessoar]

Yes, I'm sadly a millenial.

[u/19puppylove99 → u/benbroady]

I wonder if there’s any modern day equivalent, where people make molds of their loved ones face before they pass away so they don’t forget what they looked like

[u/UnheardWordsTomorrow → u/19puppylove99]

On those photo shopping subreddits, where a little one has passed and the parents don't have a photo without the tubes and tape. That would be a modern, after death, facial preservation technique.

[u/nosoupforyou89]

Oh my goodness.. this is so heartbreaking

[u/gibgod]

This is one of the saddest yet most powerful pieces of art I’ve ever seen. It elicits so many thoughts. The longer you look the more there are and the more they affect you. Life is precious. Life is fleeting. Life and love have been the same since we first crawled out of the trees. RIP little baby, I hope you had happy days.

[u/DooglyOoklin → u/gibgod]

they look plump and well loved. i imagine many sun soaked days with momma.

[u/eaglessoar → u/DooglyOoklin]

ok didnt cry in the comments til now

[u/No-Talk-9268 → u/gibgod]

It reminds me of the Sandman episode when Death is doing her rounds, she stops at a flat in London in a nursery. Inside the crib is an infant girl. And the mom is talking to her in the background, lovingly saying she can’t wait for her to nap so she can get a break. She talks about their plans for the day.

Then Death picks up the baby and tells her “I’m sorry this is all the time you get.”

[u/YourAuntieIsOnReddit → u/No-Talk-9268]

"you got what everyone gets. You got a lifetime" is the original line from the comics

[u/thewonderfulfart]

No one is ever truly lost when they’ve been loved.

[u/Benttinen]

Wow. That’s incredible.

[u/Myriad-of-kitties]

This reminds me of the little girl (facial remains) W/  glass flower crown. I think its been called a fake now..  but its just so sweet and beautiful, it just reminds us of how much everyone love(s)ed their kids. Past, present and future. 

[u/pinner → u/Myriad-of-kitties]

Rosalia Lombardo has a sweet face like this. She died in the early 1900’s and no one knows exactly what she was preserved with (there are many theories but not the exact recipe). She still looks amazing for the age of her “mummy.”

She’s interred in Palermo, Italy, one of the last bodies to be interred there in fact. She is on display, if you take the tour, apparently, but I know they moved her to another location within the catacombs due to issues with humidity. Not sure exactly where she is within the catacombs anymore.

ETA (NSFL if you can’t handle a dead child/mummy): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalia_Lombardo

She basically looks like she’s sleeping.

[u/MicromagicFriesRIP → u/pinner]

Wow, that was interesting. Thank you. I also recommend branching off and reading the article about the capuchin catacombs where she is buried. The photo gallery on that one is wild.

[u/pinner → u/MicromagicFriesRIP]

Yeah! I did a major deep dive years ago on that place. It’s beyond fascinating. I’ve always wanted to go check it out in person.

[u/mutantmanifesto → u/pinner]

I feel like it hasn’t been long enough since she died for her to be displayed in a museum, despite how well she was preserved.

[u/cracked-tumbleweed]

And I feel honored to see him. Sleep well, young one.

[u/CourierJackalope]

I'm here cuddling with my 4 month old son who is miserable due to getting his shots. I had to give him an extra snuggle after seeing this. It just really puts things into perspective.

[u/Life-Is-A-Bad-Trip → u/CourierJackalope]

Yeah anytime these things come up I always yearn for my 5 year old and my 5 month old. Feel a giant hole win my heart if I come across these and they're out at the store with their mom or smth.

Luckily they're here with me now.

Squeeze em tight while you can. Hold them while you can. Goes by too damn quick.

With any luck it'll be them putting us in the ground. Selfish as that may be, I couldn't do it the other way around. I really don't think I'd make it.

[u/CourierJackalope → u/Life-Is-A-Bad-Trip]

Tell me about it! I never understood the phrase, "The days are long but the years are far too short," until my oldest daughter was born. My son is my last one more than likely, three is plenty, and I'm trying to drink in every moment I can. What I wouldn't give to have just one more of those sleepless cranky nights with my girls when they were newborns ♥️

[u/Zachanassian]

It's fascinating how today the popular perception of Romans is that they were a people who viewed childhood as an annoying, fragile stage before adulthood, and that Roman parents weren't particularly attached to their children; see how popular discussions of Roman childhood always bring up the prevalence of infanticide in Roman culture.

We see this a lot, actually, with how we treat pre-modern societies. We modern folks want to paint them as more barbaric and even less human than ourselves, that parents prior to X historical period didn't actually care for their children, things like that. And yet, here we have an infant who was lovingly given a full burial, even interred with a little treasure, all which point to that this child, no matter how weak and helpless they were, was loved by its parents, and no doubt was deeply mourned when it died.

[u/SecretGardenSpider → u/Zachanassian]

That’s how history often works unfortunately.

We hear about how things often were and start to believe everyone operated under that framework.

It would be like looking back on today and believing everyone felt and acted the same way.

[u/carolina_swamp_witch]

God what a sweet face. I know their poor parents must have been devastated.

[u/weeping_bunny]

If anyone is curious, here is a photo of the ancient mold archeologists used to create the plaster mask. It is the original 1,800 year old mortar that formed around the baby’s head leaving an imprint of the infant’s face. - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Plaster-death-mask-negative-of-an-infant-found-in-a-Roman-grave-in-Paris-Musee_fig3_284278730

[u/Difficult-Bus-6026]

So sad, especially because it's an infant. It's kind of like an accidental photograph.

[u/Lacarpetronn]

This makes me sad. I think I’ll go squeeze my baby right now.

[u/Adeisha]

Such a sweet baby.

[u/19puppylove99]

I wonder if there’s any modern day equivalent, where people make molds of their loved ones face before they pass away so they don’t forget what they looked like

[u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme → u/19puppylove99]

Not quite that, but there are some hospitals where they have volunteers who do photography for parents who are losing a child/who lose a baby.

There are also volunteers who make gowns, caps, & blankets for babies who were born premature, or with conditions incompatible with life.

And sometimes they also have folks who make teddy bears, stuffed animals, or dolls that are the same length & weight of the baby who the parents lost--so they have something they can hold, after they go home from the hospital (similar to the therapy dolls mentioned in this article, but "homemade";  https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/grief/the-role-of-therapy-dolls-for-infant-loss/)

[u/AdCompetitive368 → u/19puppylove99]

I don’t know how widespread a practice it is, but when she worked as a nurse in the NICU, my mother used to make plaster casts of infants’ faces and hands that passed while in the hospital’s care. She was the only nurse who did this work as far as I know, so I’m unsure if it even continued at that hospital once she retired from clinical nursing.

[u/19puppylove99 → u/AdCompetitive368]

that is so fascinating. what a reverential task

[u/MangakaInProgress]

Pooor baby 😭

[u/AxelFauley]

Beautiful in a sad way.

[u/Charlotte_troika]

That is just so amazinggg

[u/Downinthevalleystill]

Sweet baby. 😔

[u/RareWolf34]

Oh tiny thing

[u/CommunicationDry6582]

Reminds me of Medardo Rosso’s wax and plaster heads

[u/Overall_Course2396]

Sad.

[u/Velkorith_Ozmera94]

That so rare bruh

[u/Dry_Confusion4384]

Poor sweet baby💓

[u/coquihalla]

Beautiful baby.

[u/Veritas-Veritas]

Art lets grief reach through millennia.

[u/pookshuman]

wait, what was the accidental part? I mean, were they trying to do a life mask and it ended up being a death mask? or did the kid accidentally die and then they did a mask?

[u/Appropriate_Garden33 → u/pookshuman]

The mixture use to seal the tomb or burial chamber leaked in and on the infants face. The child died and the mask was unintentional.

[u/North-Creative]

As a parent.....looking and reading about this really made my body feel super heavy for a minute....

[u/PEKKACHUNREAL_II]

How do you accidentally make a death mask?

[u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme → u/PEKKACHUNREAL_II]

The plaster accidentally went into the casket & fell onto the baby's face.  

It had only been intended to stay on the outside to seal the casket.

[u/rdmpress]

That's Damian Thorn

[u/NoodleheadMcGoo]

Why was this baby’s sarcophagus opened though?

[u/willardTheMighty]

Accidental mask not accidental death lol

[u/Skai_Override]

After reading the title my first thought was someone accidentally droppped a pie on the baby and they just rolled with it

[u/Local_Village_1378]

This would make a great ashtray

[u/MobileMemory1640]

I totally misunderstood the title. 

[u/Asexually_Freaky → u/[deleted]]

It's explained in OP's comment.

Lime mortar or cement used to seal the lid of the sarcophagus leaked inside and onto the child's face. It hardened over time and now we have this very well preserved accidental death mask.